Restoring an Image on a multi-partition system

First of all, apologies for the length of this post, but I felt it was necessary to understand my multiple partition setup to be able to answer my 2 questions which I pose at the end. I have been using Acronis TI for a number of years and used Powerquest Drive Image prior to that. I currently use TI11 to make separate images of multiple partitions I have on my computer. I am making this post because for the first time I am going to have to Restore one of the many image backups I have made over the years and I want to make sure I have no problems.

My PC has 3 internal disks: 2 off 120GB IDE and 1 off 250GB SATA. There is also an external 400GB SATA disk. The PC has 4 operating systems installed:

On Disk 0: C: Active Primary, Windows 98, FAT32; D: Windows2000 NTFS; E: WIndowsXP Pro, NTFS; F: WIndowsXP Pro, NTFS; G: Data storage FAT32; H: Programs for Windows2000, NTFS; I: Programs for WINXP; T: Data, NTFS. All partition are Logical except C:.

On Disk 1: The same structure as Disk 0, but ALL partitions are Logical. On Infrequent occasions I use Powerquest Drive Image v5 to make copies of the partitions on Disk 0.

Disk 2: Two Logical partitions, U: and X:, NTFS for Media and Backup Image storage.
Disk 3: External 400GB NTFS Logical for backups of Backup images and other data.

Having installed all the operating systems in the correct order, Windows has produced a multi-boot screen to enable selection of the required operating system at boot up.

Now the problem: The second Windows installation on the F partition no longer starts up. It gets as far as the Windows XP (with blue background) screen but the 'Windows is starting up' message and security log-in screen never appear. So, I have decided to replace the F partition with my latest TI11 Image from the X partition.

Having never restored an operating system before, I have done some research here and have gone through the restore process and cancelled before making the restore.

I need to be sure that this restore process cannot prevent my main operating system (Windows XP on E) from booting up and operating correctly.

The 'Dry Run' of the Image Restore raised a couple of questions:

Question 1: At the 'Partition or whole hard disk to restore' prompt, I am given the opportunity to select either or both of
WindowsXP [F]
MBR and Track 0
There is a note in the User Guide to 'Restore the MBR if it is critical to your system booting'. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to know that, but I believe that I should NOT select this. It is worth noting that I have done some partition moving and resizing since I made the Image that I want to restore.

Question 2: At the 'Select restored Partition type' (Active, Primary, Logical) prompt, I believe I should leave this at Logical.

Thank you for your patience,

Geoff

 

As you have got yourself into the unfortunate position of never having tested your backups in the past there are some things you could try before commiting to a restore.

First run CHKDSK R on the drive in question. While you are at it, if you have not run CHKDSK recently, you could check all your partitions.

Another non destructive repair would be to run the Windows System File Checker. The command is SFC scannow and you should have the XP install CD to hand as it may be needed by the process.

If you still have the problem a restore of the F partition would be the next step.
Just select the F partition. You are using the Windows multi-boot method. The boot files are at the root of your C drive and appear to be working correctly so there is no need to restore them.

Keep the original partition type.

Xpilot

 

Xpilot,

Thank you for your help.

I have in fact run chkdsk on my partitions. I was prompted to do this when Partition Magic 8 refused to move my main XP partition (E), complaining of 'too many errors'. I suspect that may have been associated with having to power down the PC a number of times whilst running Windows and trying to upgrade TI10 to TI11. I eventually found out from this forum that I needed to stop the TRKWKS service from running - then I could install TI11. I have recently tried to upgrade to TI2009 with similar problems. I have decided to give up on that as it's taking up too much of my time. If it's not broken, don't try to fix it, and TI11 seems to be working well.

I'm not sure how I would run the Windows System FIle Checker on my XP installation on the F partition as it will not start up. Hence I cannot run SFC from the command prompt.

It looks like I have no reason not to run the restore process on the F partition, without restoring the MBR and keeping the partition type at logical.

Thanks again for your help

Geoff

 

Geoff,

Good luck. I'm interested in the outcome too.

 

Hello FOrmula400,

Thank you for your interesting in Acronis True Image

You can restore image with selecting “MBR and Track 0” as it’s used only in case your system is unbootable and indicates mbr issues while booting. Concerning partition types: Active – is used for system partition, Primary partitions can be used for any partition but there can only be 4 at a time on the drive so as extension you can use Logical partition type.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

I do not understand.

No specific third party multi-boot manager has been declared,
so I assume this is a sort of standard Microsoft setup,
and I thought that meant only primary partitions could be set as active.

If C:\ is the only primary, how could F:\ (or D:\ or E:\) ever be booted ?

Regards
Alan